


Empty Chairs

by Whis



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Minor Character Death, Original Character(s), only mentioned - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:53:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29087889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whis/pseuds/Whis
Summary: A tour through Buck's past Christmas until the one when Maddie gives him the best gif ever
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Maddie Buckley, Maddie Buckley/Howie "Chimney" Han
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24
Collections: 9-1-1 Server Gift Exchange 2020, 9-1-1 Tales





	Empty Chairs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kassierole](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kassierole/gifts).



Christmas was always a bunch of unusual days at the Buckley’s house. With both parents being successful surgeons, it would have been nothing sort of a Christmas miracle to have them staying at home with their kids and celebrate the Holidays 

Buck and Maddie's parents weren't bad people, well, they were nice enough to feel some sort of guilt, so they always tried to compensate their kids

The kids always thought that was the reason why there were always a lot of expensive presents, gourmet foods, and their grandparents were the ones sitting at the table instead of the babysitter and some empty chairs.

However, Buck never realized how much he was missing until he lost what he used to have. 

First of all, he lost the toys. As he grew up so did the things he was allowed to have, and although the presents were always something expensive, always something like clothes, books and things for school, always something useful, never something exciting, well, not anymore. 

Still, losing the toys and games wasn’t a drama, although the first year he acted as if it was.

The following things that disappeared from his life were more significant. 

The first devastating loss that Buck and Maddie ever suffered in their lives was the one of their grandfather. 

His grandpa's death took away something very important from within a very young Evan Buckley, something he never got back. He can’t name it, he only feels a hole in his heart that he can’t fill. He guesses other people would call it innocence, but the thing is that he still feels some kind of innocence within himself, even if it's not the same he used to feel every time his grandfather showed up at his house with a new big story to tell him.

His grandfather was a great tale-teller, and Buck loved to sit down beside the man and listen to his stories. He could do so for hours, and sometimes before he falls asleep and he is in between awake and asleep, Buck can hear his grandfather telling him "once upon a time..."

That was the first time someone left and never got back.

And that year there was an empty chair in the Christmas table that was never filled.

Then it was his grandmother. 

Cancer took her away, and although they had been getting ready for it for a couple of years it was heartbreaking nevertheless.

The expensive food, the wonderful decoration, and the colorful wrapping paper hiding the boring, expensive presents that his parents used to give him in order to buy his silence and his obedience went with her. It turned out grandma had always been in charge of everything.

By then Buck didn’t care about presents, food or decoration, he only cared about the people sitting at the table

So he and Maddie had their own way of celebrating and they didn’t need a banquet, they were happy with burgers and pizzas as their parents hardly ever allowed them to eat that kind of food. Afterward, they’d watch the silliest Hammark Christmas movie they could find and laugh at how silly it was, even though deep down they would have killed to have what those families on their TV were having. 

They didn't miss the things that grandma used to give them, but there were another empty chair and more silence that they deliberately ignored while in Maddie's room, in their own, warm little bubble.

But then, it was Maddie who left. And with her, Christmas went away for years

He couldn’t blame her. She simply started to grow up and so spending Christmas with her little brother stopped being her idea of fun. 

She tried though because Maddie always did so with him.

So they would eat together and then Maddie would leave to some party with some guy. 

Until one year she brought her boyfriend to their Christmas night, and somehow that new addition felt like a loss even though Doug was filling an empty place at the table.

When she got married Buck was 16 years old and he spent his first Christmas alone.

It wasn’t Christmas though, no really. It was just a night with some presents he didn’t want and the same food he eats every other day, an evening that he spent in a house decorated for a magazine cover instead of a family.

Loneliness became his way of life and he hated it but it seemed to follow him everywhere. 

Even when he was at a big party fucking some stranger in a dirty bathroom, he was alone.

He went to South America and found joy working a job that made his parents ashamed of him and also kept him busy on Holiday days, it didn’t matter what kind of holidays because by now those days were just a reminder of all the things he had lost and the other things he never got.

Then he left South America and tried to be a SEAL and make his parents proud of him, and spent a Christmas training in a lot of things he rather forget but are ingrained in his mind even when he never made it to the end.

And then a random day, he found his passion, a job that made him proud of himself and gave him a family to spend some Christmas days as the people on the silliest Hallmark Christmas Day he could remember did.

Maddie returned to him, sharper around the edge and traumatized by a man and a life that Buck felt he should have prevented even though he knew it hadn’t been in his hands, he never had that power.

She was there, hating Christmas and a lot of things she used to love because she was hurting, and Buck only wanted to take her in his arms to protect her and help her to heal.

Somebody else did and Buck was ecstatic because it was his brother, a good man who would love her as she deserves.

She healed, Buck grew and they started to fill chairs with new friends, ugly sweaters, turkey, laughs, kids and mistletoe.

But sometimes, Buck felt he was missing something, he just didn't know what.

It was Maddie, his sister, his constant even when she was absent, who gave him the best present ever. 

It had to be Maddie.

His niece was born on Christmas Eve, in the middle of a global pandemic, and it was weird, scary, unique, and wonderful

He couldn’t go to the hospital and wait with Chim and Maddie. Chim and Maddie were on their own and couldn't share the happiest moment of their life with their siblings in the hospital, in the same room, but Buck and Albert waited in the parking, nervous and excited but surrounded by grieving families, the ambulance siren and people going home surrounded by victory applausses

It was the new abnormal that the Buckley-Han forgot when Joy Hank Buckley was born.

The next day, on Christmas Day, Albert and Buck made a big banquet. Buck's house, the one he shared with Chim and at different moments of the pandemic, was decorated with the silliest ornaments they have found or made. There were popcorns lines and badly decorated cookies hanging from a big random plant that they were using as a Christmas Tree because they couldn’t find one on Christmas Day.

They didn’t have ugly sweaters so they draw the worst Christmas cartoons they could figure out on some old white t-shirt and they also transformed some red bags into Santa hats and their mask into papa Noel beards… well, more like weird red and white inexplicable things on their faces

So the Christmas Tree was an ugly plant with ugly decoration, they looked ridiculous, and they met their niece through a screen, but the moment he could see his niece blinking at him and doing something with her face he swore it was a smile, he decided it was the best Christmas ever and she was the best Christmas gif he could ever get.

Everybody agreed.

And even though nobody that mattered was with them that day, he didn't feel any empty chair

**Author's Note:**

> My niece was born on Christmas Eve, which makes her the best Christmas gif ever and I thought Buck, Maddie, and everybody else deserves thatç  
> So here is me giving them the same joy


End file.
